Jerome Corsi Quotes

The problem priests who sexually prey on young boys is not a modern problem only. This quotation demonstrates that the problem has existed for over 1000 years and probably existed in the earliest days of Christianity. This has been a problem of many clergies of different religions. However, the Roman Catholic authorities of the day seemed to be more proactive in dealing with it than in the scandals of the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.

The official position of the church was against the child molestation and rape by pedophile priests as it was against artificial contraception. Harris based his conclusion on the effort the church leaders and priests were making for each of the two issues. While the Pope condemned in no uncertain terms the pedophilia of the priests, the sermons and the literature of the church dealt with contraception much more frequently. At the time, the church was still covering up the sex scandal and some church officials were still in denial as to the extent. When the Pope was a cardinal, he also contributed to the cover-up, claiming to be hamstrung by the limitations of cannon law with regard to defrocking perverted priests.

The Roman Catholic Church hierarchy had just cracked down on some nuns and their orders who were discussing and debating classic church positions, like male only priesthood, birth control, women’s roles in the society and in the search. There were many strongly worded admonishments from the Vatican. Down found it odd that the Church Fathers should be so distressed by activist nuns when their reaction to Priest sexual predation of young boys was by comparison, so mild.

Lotario de' Conti

Smith was the first Roman Catholic to run for President. He was very popular but there was a substantial amount of anti-Catholicism in America at the time. He lost, probably by the margin of the anti-Catholic vote.

Naples was an independent kingdom before the unification of Italy. This quotation illustrates one of the lowest periods of the Roman Catholic Church where the personal morality of the Pope and Cardinals was greatly at odds with the earlier and current positions of the Church. This hypocrisy, nepotism, and corruption was one of the major factors that led to the Reformation. Note that the Pope had an illegitimate son who he named a Cardinal and the Pope wanted his son to marry the daughter of the king. The king was not enthusiastic given the son’s status as a Cardinal of the Church.

The Roman Catholic Church then maintained that salvation was dependent upon obedience to the Pope in all things civil and religious. See {595166} for the way that the Church at the time allowed some authority to civil authorities.

This sad quotation illustrates how some of the leaders of the Church were so out of touch with law and morality. The Archbishop justified the archdiocesan cover-up of the crimes of sexually predatory priests and actually tried to lay much of the responsibility on children who might have been streetwise. It is almost like the Priests were seduced. The typical action of the church authorities was to transfer the sexually predatory priest to another assignment where in most cases he continued the predation with other children. Even if the children were very sexually active, the law is that they are under the age of consent and may not consent to sexual activity. Any adult having sex with a teen ager is guilty of statutory rape. However, the Church authorities decided in many cases that the age of consent was 12 contrary to state law in most states. Therefore in their minds there was no crime because the child was old enough to consent so they felt justified in not referring the crime to the police. See {633188} . Of course, few of the child victims of the priests were sexually sophisticated. Most were innocent and totally intimidated by the high spiritual and community role of the priest. Weakland was removed from his position of authority as part of the Church program to eliminate the problem of predatory priests and irresponsible bishops.

The Christian Roman Empire was split in two—a Western (Latin) Empire led by the Roman Catholic Church in Rome, and the Eastern (Greek) Roman Empire led by the Orthodox Church headquartered in Constantinople (Byzantium). The two churches were not only in a theological conflict but violence broke out and the armies of the two religious empires attacked each other now and then. In 1439, leaders of the two versions of Christianity met in Florence, and they agreed to reunuion in which the Eastern Orthodox would again acknowledge the authority of the Pope. This was not a popular agreement with the majority of the Eastern Orthodox people and some of the clerical leadership. Constantine, realizing that he did not have pubic support at home for the end to the schism and the acceptance of the authority of the Pope, kept stalling on officially announcing and implementing the unity treaty. The Pope’s patience was wearing thin. Constantine did not adhere to ther treaty and the two churches have been apart ever since.

Hoover was an inveterate racist and had an extreme hatred of King. A month later King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What was not known at the time was Hoover, although it had nothing to do with law enforcement, actually contacted New York Cardinal Spellman and illegally transmitted to him parts of FBI confidential and secret files on King for the purpose of persuading the Pope not to grant King an audience. Nonetheless, Hoover himself had a behind the scenes reputation of leaking for his personal purposes and that much of the contents of many FBI files were notes on unsubstantiated claims made by political enemies and often far from the truth. The Cardinal, the Pope and their staffs chose to ignore the Hoover materials.